It is during these years of prosperity and peace that we are able to get the clearest view of the scope and aims of Henry’s general scheme of home and foreign policy. That policy, when fully matured in its author’s mind, formed a consistent whole; it was however made up of two distinct parts, originating in the twofold position of Henry himself. His empire extended from the western shores of Ireland to the Cévennes, and from the northernmost point of the mainland of Britain to the Pyrenees. But this empire was composed of a number of separate members over which his authority differed greatly in character and degree. These members, again, fell into two well-marked groups. Over the one group Henry ruled as supreme head; no other sovereign had ever claimed to be his superior, none now claimed to be even his equal, within the British Isles. In the other group, however, he had at least a nominal superior in the king of France. It was impossible to deal with these two groups of states on one and the same principle; and Henry had never attempted to do so. The one group had its centre in England, the other in Anjou. As a necessary consequence, Henry’s policy had also two centres throughout his reign. The key to it as a whole lies in its blending of two characters united in one person, yet essentially distinct: the character of the king of England and supreme lord of the British Isles, and the character of the head of the house of Anjou. Henry himself evidently kept the two characters distinct in his own mind. His policy as king of England, however little it may have been consciously aimed at such a result--and we should surely be doing a great injustice to Henry’s sagacity if we doubted that it was so aimed, at least in some degree--certainly tended to make England a strong and independent national state, with its vassal states, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, standing around it as dependent allies. If he had ever for a moment dreamed of reducing his insular dominions to a mere subject-province of the empire which he was building up in Gaul, when he thought of intrusting their government to his boy-heir under the guardianship of Thomas, that dream had been broken at once and for ever by the quarrel which deprived the child of his guardian and the king of his friend. But, on the other hand, Henry certainly never at any time contemplated making his continental empire a mere dependency of the English crown. It was distinctly an Angevin empire, with its centre in the spot whence an Angevin count had been promised of old that the sway of his descendants should spread to the ends of the earth. Henry in short had another work to carry on besides that of Cnut and William and Henry I. He had to carry on also the work of Fulk the Black and Geoffrey Martel and Fulk V.; and although to us who know how speedy was to be its overthrow that work looks a comparatively small matter, yet at the time it may well have seemed equally important with the other